I've decided to take the MTBS forums in a new direction. Since MTBS was founded, we insisted that posts were limited to non-commercial entities or were not self-promotional in nature. This was necessary because for years, MTBS was the only independent community, and it was all too tempting for people to use our site for the sake of self promoting and not giving anything back to help sustain the service. Most of the work that makes MTBS possible is done on a volunteer basis.

The industry changed in a big way since. We're no longer dealing with multimillion dollar companies and product makers looking to take advantage of what's before them. The industry is primarily filled with young companies and bright ideas people working to get their big break with little to no resources. Among other things, MTBS was founded to make such opportunities possible.

As the official community of the non-profit Immersive Technology Alliance, our responsibilities are great. Whether or not people or companies are part of this alliance, MTBS is one of the tools we use to help build the industry. This is our heritage.

So I wish to underscore the expectations in the MTBS forums:

1. All posters are welcome: corporate, media, or otherwise. Size doesn't matter.
2. All ideas are welcome, and your value will not be determined by an anonymous up-vote or down-vote.
3. We will do our best to give as many viable immersive tech hardware products and applicable software products a dedicated forum so they can be adequately discussed and grown.
4. As usual: no profanity, rudeness, politics (I hate politics), religion, etc. This isn't the place.
5. Promoting other forums for the sake of promoting other forums will be frowned upon (e.g. "This forum sucks, go to mine!").

I seriously don't know what to expect from this change. Maybe the new product forums will remain empty, or maybe they will explode with activity from consumers and product-makers alike. Our revenue does not change according to traffic size, so it doesn't matter to me. What is important is there is an open community for people to be part of: something free of vested interests in specific technologies, and something that people can feel welcome to be part of.